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Adam Cairns
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the poet
Based in South Wales, Adam Cairns is a poet and a photographer whose poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies including Green Ink Poetry, Poetry Wales and The Ekphrastic Review. He's currently studying for an MA in Poetry Writing with the Poetry School and Newcastle University, and runs poetry workshops for the RSPB at the Newport Wetlands Centre.
the poems
Archaic
My sister calls, says there's something she's found I need to see—
can a wound be buried in the blood
could a faint trace
of the trench he died in linger, ramped into an impression—
a patch of green barley
the farmer leaves—
she shows me the album, the whole brown and white of him—
dark eyes boring through
the century
between us, that ridge above his nose, familiar—I take the photo
to a mirror, hold it up looking back
at myself.
I tuck the photo in my pocket, climb up Gray Hill to find
where the forest crouches,
my home hidden
in the play of hills and there, beyond the frown lines of spruce,
the moraine of stumps, a first go
at bracken, I see
they have planted trees, row after row of plastic-wrapped saplings
shining in cold air, white as graves
at Neuve-Chapelle
each casting a small shadow—and looking back, the path ducks inside
the shelter of archaic trees, the last
of the sky going out
my visible breath, the ghost of everyone there.
Last year the apple
tree smouldered
hidden wires
from its roots
charging limbs
with sparks
of blossom.
All summer
bees droned
in sheaths
of nectar and we
leant together
in deckchairs
dozing.
But this year
came a cold spring
and though
frail blossoms
opened a promise
of coupling
and sap
within the flex
of boughs
surged
in traceries
of twigs
the flowering
failed.
After you left
ice sugared
every petal
with a touch
of death
so there are few
fruit this autumn
the tree alone
with its leaves
stalling.
Only last summer
there was still time
for everything
Balloon
sadness sweeps
the boundary clear—
lines of impeccable spruce
a touch of sharpness
in beech and ash—
an old man I saw
fifteen years ahead
all this loneliness
shadowing me
the clatter of family
I gave away easily
a balloon wind-snatched
from my five-year-old hand
floating off
and unable to trace
a route back
to my hand
letting go
the crumpled
gaudy tin-foil
of what we had
collapses
all the air inside
long since voided
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb
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